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Elliot had been miserable ever since he’d gotten home.
He’d actually done it, something he never thought he’d do. He put his papers in after 25 years in the NYPD.
All because he shot a teenage girl and he could barely look at himself in the mirror anymore.
And he sure as hell couldn’t look across the desk and look his partner in the eye and know that he killed for her.
He’d never know for sure if Jenna was going to swing that gun Olivia’s way next, but he wasn’t going to take the chance. This was the exact thing they’d been evaluated for years before. He would die for her and he would kill for her, and that’s why he knew he couldn’t stay.
“So what did Olivia say when you told her you weren’t coming back?” Kathy asked from her spot on the couch where she was folding laundry like it was a perfectly normal day. Like it wasn’t the last day of the only adult life he’d ever really known.
“I didn’t tell her,” he mumbled back, lifting his beer to his lips and trying to focus on the Yankees game on TV.
“What do you mean you didn’t tell her?” Kathy asked.
“I mean I didn’t tell her,” he said. “It’s not like we’ve been talking a lot these last few months.”
Or at all. But Kathy probably knew that. She’d probably seen his phone light up with Olivia’s name a hundred times a day every day for the last three months and he’d let every single call and text go unanswered.
“She’s your partner , Elliot,” Kathy said. “One of your best friends. And you’re not even going to bother to say goodbye to her?”
He didn’t want to say goodbye. That was the problem. But there was no way to keep Olivia in his life outside of the job (not the way he wanted to), and there was no way he could stay with what he’d done.
“And how exactly do you expect me to tell her I’m abandoning her?” Elliot snapped, taking another long swig of his beer. “Too much time has passed.”
Kathy tilted her head to the side and looked at him.
“You could write her a letter,” Kathy said.
“A letter?” Elliot asked, giving Kathy a bemused look, assuming she was kidding. But her face looked completely serious.
“Maybe it would be easier to get you two talking after so much time has passed,” Kathy said, standing from the couch and making her way to the computer desk.
She pulled out a piece of paper, a pen, and a book for him to write on in his lap.
“You’re serious,” Elliot said, staring down at the items she handed him.
Kathy nodded before going back to the couch to fold laundry.
Elliot picked up the pen and let it hover over the paper. What exactly was he supposed to say to her after three months of radio silence? Hey, sorry, I shot a teenager because I love you and couldn’t watch you die. That’d probably go over like a lead balloon.
Elliot wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there, staring at a blank page. But it must have been long enough because he finally heard Kathy sigh.
“What?” Elliot asked.
“You haven’t written anything,” she said.
Elliot swallowed thickly.
“I don’t know where to start,” he said.
“Now, this might sound crazy,” Kathy said. “But I think ‘Dear Olivia,’ could be the way to go.”
“That’s good,” Elliot said, scrawling it at the top of the page.
Kathy smirked.
“You want some help?” she asked.
“Maybe just like the first line,” Elliot said. “Just to get this rolling.”
Kathy fed him some line about them having such a long partnership and he copied what she said word for word. But then things took a turn.
“But the truth is, what we had was never real,” Kathy said, rolling a pair of socks and tossing them into the basket.
Elliot’s brain did a full stop, but his hand continued to write.
“We got in the way of being who and where we needed to be,” Kathy said, and like an idiot, Elliot’s hand followed.
“It’s been a long time, so if there’s a man in your life I hope he’s the kind, faithful, devoted man that you deserve,” Kathy said.
It hadn’t been that long, Elliot though. Surely she wouldn’t already have a new boyfriend, a serious boyfriend in the three months he’d been gone. Would she?
“Then you can just sign it and seal it up,” Kathy said, hefting the laundry basket onto her hip. “You can send it to her, but maybe if you hand deliver it to the precinct it’ll get you two talking.”
Elliot watched as Kathy made her way upstairs to Eli’s room to put the laundry away.
All he had to do was sign his name.
But he couldn’t.
“In a parallel universe ,” he scratched across the bottom of the page, “ It will always be you and I. ”
Or was it you and me? He never did get these things right and Olivia usually mocked him for his grammar.
But he didn’t want to think about that. Elliot signed his name quickly and sealed up the envelope before walking to the desk to put away the book and the pen. That’s where he saw the mini badge they’d given him for his years of service and his Marine medallion in the top drawer.
He pocketed the two items and yelled up the stairs to Kathy that he’d be back soon.
Elliot felt like he was on autopilot. He felt like he had to get this letter out of his hands (get most of those lies out of his hands) and into Olivia’s so he could have a clean break. He was leaving and he couldn’t bring her with him. It was better that way.
But when he got to the desk and looked into the squad room he could see her in there, talking with Sherri West and two other people he’d never seen before he knew he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t talk to her because if he heard her voice he’d never be able to leave.
If he handed her the letter he and Kathy wrote that would be the end of them. And even though Elliot was leaving, he wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye.
He slid the letter into his jacket pocket and his fingers bumped up against his mini badge and the medallion he’d thrown in there on the way to the precinct.
And that gave him an idea.
“Hey, do you have a padded envelope, a Post-It, and a pen?” Elliot asked the desk sergeant, someone else he didn’t recognize. Was this entire place in turnover?
“Do I look like Staples to you?” the desk sergeant asked.
“I’m NYPD…Ex-NYPD,” Elliot said, correcting himself. “Humor me?”
The desk sergeant rolled his eyes but passed Elliot the supplies he asked for.
He quickly scrawled Olivia’s name and the precinct address on the front of the envelope. And on the Post-It, he wrote three words:
SEMPER FI
EL
He stuck the Post-It to the mini badge and threw the medallion in too before passing the whole thing to the desk sergeant.
“Can you give this to Detective Benson, please?” he asked.
“Who should I tell her it’s from?” the desk sergeant asked.
“She’ll know,” Elliot said, turning before the man could ask him any more questions.
He slipped onto the elevator, feeling the weight of the letter he and Kathy wrote still in his pocket.
Maybe things would have been easier if he’d given her that letter instead. But he was wrong before. It wouldn’t have been better.
This was better. Her having his service badge and his medallion. He couldn’t say goodbye to her, and he couldn’t say forever. But he could tell her that he’d always be faithful to her on the job and off of it.
Even if he couldn’t tell her in person.